Admirable — If you follow goings on in the North American scene you will no doubt be aware that ESEA Season 16 signups are upon us. Guess what? That applies to the European division too! Following on from the inaugural season which saw a sixteen team Open Division, ESEA are inviting you to participate once more.

The signups are open right now, but will close at 07:00 CET on Tuesday 25th February. That’s roughly one week from today and all teams that wish to compete are required to have all league fees paid by then. ESEA Premium can be purchased at a later date so long as it is before the matches begin, with Week 1 commencing Sunday 2nd March.

Changes

Those of you who had hoped to see a little Sunshine in ETF2L Season 17 and came away disappointed will be happy to see its inclusion in the ESEA Season 16 map pool. So, for now, we say good bye to the grey skies of Coalplant.

“Due to the delayed ending of Season 14, which led to move-ups happening three days ago and not allowing teams enough time to pay, we have elected to give players and teams an additional two weeks to sign up for Season 15.

Registration will now remain open until Monday, September 30th, 2013 at 11:59pm CST. Once registration closes there will be a few days for teams to get acquainted with the system and to schedule their first matches, which will begin Sunday, October 6th, 2013.

Season 15 will feature over $90,000 in prizes across five games, four regions, and seventeen divisions. Be sure to read the announcement for more information, and use the link below to register and pay.”

This is how the schedule stands in light of the deadline extension. Note also the adoption of the new Snakewater G7 version to bring the map pool in line with ETF2L Season 16.

Admirable — A new season of competitive Team Fortress 2 rapidly approaches as the summer waves goodbye and autumn puts an end to your ambitions of a real life. The traditional lazy summer practice schedules give way to eSports dreams and new teams, keener than mustard and on the hunt for screenshots to set ETF2L admins hearts aflutter.

There has been a gradual sea change permeating the scene here in Europe since we welcomed North America as our overlords in the wake of Insomnia 46. In the year since then there was a growing interest in “NA Rules”, more specifically the game structure, play schedule, unlocks and maps adopted by our cousins across the pond and embodied in their flagship competition ESEA Invite and the thrice yearly LAN finals.

At the time I started a dialogue with ESEA’s Torbull and after some back and forth he concluded that whilst they were interested in supporting TF2 in Europe, they were going to focus on getting their fledgling CS:GO offerings off the ground first. True to his word, that appears to be how things have transpired and we now stand on the cusp of our first season of ESEA EU with a one-size-fits-all Open Division.

Arie — In their quest to find more suckers to mine bitcoins for them, ESEA is spreading its wings to Europe. Besides providing heating for your apartment in the winter months, the ESEA client also functions as an anti-cheat program and a general client for league stuff.

The last time the EU scene was forced to use an anti-cheat client, it didn’t go so well, and the last time the EU scene tried to get behind a pay-to-play league, it didn’t go so well either. Will this time be different? That will be up to us Jurpeans, here’s some community member reactions so far:

AnimaL: hahah this is hilarious move considering how bad ESA failed at their pay 2 play tournaments in eu

ipz: I support this idea so much! I would like to help if anything is needed! OHGMAWD maybe we can safe EU tf2

CanFo: This would be a great thing. I’m just wondering how many people would actually pay the entry fee + premium to participate. I certainly will, if my team is in.

Arie — Everyone’s favourite bitcoin mining site American TF2 league, ESEA, is being sued! In case you missed what happened, the ESEA client program, which you need to have installed if you want to play in their league, was used to mine bitcoins. This involves doing a lot of calculations on the CPU and GPU, which can lead to overheating and damage.

ESEA reaction

A bunch of people have now sued, seeking compensation for the damage caused by this unauthorized use of their computer. A judge and jury will now have to determine if ESEA’s original and rather dubious excuse (“rogue employee did it, sorry lol”) is factual and sufficient.

So are we rooting for ESEA to survive this, or would this be a great opportunity for a NATF2L-like league to take over?

Skyride — While those of in Europe are having fun in our mumble channels and “PCW” servers, 4 teams of brave nerds are making their way from all 4 corners of the land of the Red, White and Blue to Dallas, TX. Starting at 5pm CET on Saturday, they will be playing an incredible series of video games to decide who will take home the lions share of a massive $10,800 prize pool. Yes, its ESEA LAN!

The tournament format is Double Elimination, and will be covered on the ESEA Orange stream by a group of fine gentlemen from TeamFortress.TV, namely cbear, Slin, Bloodsire and bl4nk with truktruk riding the Camera all weekend. The winner of this LAN will Represent NA at i49, more details can be found at http://i49.tf/.